The present invention relates to an apparatus for cracking nuts at high production rates, and which is configured for the processing of relatively small nuts, such as pecan seedlings.
In prior U.S. Pat. No. 6,205,915, there is disclosed a high production nutcracking apparatus wherein a plurality of cracking units are arranged on a rotatable turret, with each cracking unit having an opening adapted to receive an individual nut from a feed conveyor. Each cracking unit includes a mechanism for then cracking the nut as the turret continues to rotate, which is actuated by a pneumatic control system.
The feed conveyor as disclosed in the ""915 patent includes a feed chain which comprises a plurality of nut transport elements which are mounted in succession, and with each nut transport element having an upwardly open receptacle for receiving an individual nut as it advances through a feed hopper. The feed chain extends in an upwardly inclined direction through the feed hopper and it is designed to feed the nuts from the hopper at a relatively high speed to the cracking units, while effectively orienting the nuts in the respective receptacles so that they may be engaged by the cracking units in an end to end orientation. To singulate and orient the nuts in the receptacle, there is provided a deflecting plate which overlies a portion of the upwardly inclined segment.
The nutcracking apparatus of the above patent is designed to efficiently crack nuts of relatively large size, such as hybrid pecans, which are designated as size 12 to 15 (i.e. 12/16 to 15/16 inches in diameter). When the apparatus attempts to crack nuts of smaller size, such as size 8 to 11 pecan seedlings, problems develop in that multiple nuts will remain in the receptacles of the feed elements, or the nuts will be misaligned in the receptacles of the nut transport elements. In such cases, the cracking unit will not pick up the nuts, or it may throw out one or both nuts after pick up but without proper cracking. This greatly reduces the efficiency of the cracking process, and leads to further problems when the nuts are fed from the cracking apparatus to a conventional sheller and an air separator.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a nutcracking apparatus which is able to efficiently crack nuts of relatively small size.
It is a further object to provide an apparatus of the described type which is able to be easily constructed so as to be able to efficiently process relatively small nuts, by converting the apparatus of the prior art to the novel configuration of the present invention, utilizing a small number of new components.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention are achieved in the embodiment illustrated herein by the provision of a nut feeding apparatus which comprises a hopper for storing a relatively large quantity of the nuts to be cracked, and an endless conveyor which has an upper run extending through the hopper to a delivery point exteriorly thereof. The conveyor includes a feed chain and a plurality of nut transport elements mounted in succession on the feed chain. Each element is of generally block-like configuration and has an upper face. The upper face of each element has a longitudinally extending notch formed in an upper corner thereof, and a generally semi-cylindrical upwardly facing receptacle extends laterally across the remainder of the upper face and is sized to receive an individual nut.
A drive system is provided for rotating the endless conveyor such that the nut transport elements move in succession through the hopper and to the delivery point, and a singularizing and orienting means is provided for effectively removing any nuts in excess of one from the receptacle of each nut transport element and for effectively orienting the nut with its end to end direction extending along the receptacle.
With the above construction, the receptacles are reduced in size as compared to the receptacles of the nut transport elements of the prior art, and the smaller receptacles are thus able to process nuts of smaller size. Also, the conversion of the apparatus of the prior art to the configuration of the present invention may be readily accomplished by merely replacing the nut transport elements with those of the new configuration, and then adding the spacer bar which occupies the space which was removed to form the notches in the receptacles. A fundamental re-design of the apparatus of the prior art to render it capable of efficiently processing nuts of reduced size, is therefore not required.